The “rare and marvellous virtues” of some form of lotion made from human fat to relieve earache, tumours and sciatica pain are listed on a leaflet found at the Notarial Archives in Valletta more than 250 years after it was printed.

The 1756 leaflet advertising grasso umano as a cure for inflamed nerves and fever in the young and old, comes complete with instructions of how and when to apply the product.

The single folio states that the product was distributed by Felice Tadini di Cesena and includes a list of colleges that approved it.

The leaflet was last printed in Naples, but the marketing campaign made it to other parts of Italy, Vienna and Paris.

Leafing through documents is like going through a time machine

This is one of the curious items found stacked with thousands of other documents in what was probably a store room with the words Eddie’s Bar printed in red letters on the door. It is one of the rooms at the archives in St Christopher Street that is being painstakingly emptied of piles of history on paper.

“Leafing through documents at the Notarial Archives is like going through a time machine – they provide a picture of the lifestyle in Malta in the past centuries,” maritime historian Joan Abela told The Sunday Times of Malta.

For Dr Abela and book and paper conservator Therese Zammit Lupi, Eddie’s Bar is a treasure trove.

Together with the help of volunteers they are sorting the documents by date, in preparation for conservation and documentation. They have already organised around 4,600 items dating between the 1500s and 1800s.

They also came across a document authorised by Fr Joannes Antonious Aldave granting safe passage to the Holy Land in June of 1793 to a shipmaster and his crew.

It was issued by the Franciscan Friars Minor Convent of San Salvator in Jerusalem, who had been appointed custodians of the Holy Land after the fall of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187.

Dr Abela explained that during the 17th century, restrictions were imposed on corsairs operating in the Levant and the waters of the Holy Land had a buffer zone that kept pirate ships away. Whoever was sent there on a mission had to have a passport.

The document comes complete with the seal depicting the symbol that the friars adopted: the crossed arms of Christ and St Francis against the background of a simple cross with the Holy Spirit as a dove. The five crosses on the same seal recall the five wounds of Jesus.

“Every day is Christmas at the archives as we unearth new stuff,” Dr Abela said. The archive houses around two kilometres of shelving of paper heritage.

Over the past year, around half of the documents were wrapped in protective covers as most of them were covered with brown paper – a hazard for the manuscripts.

Meanwhile, the bookshelves’ side-hardboards were replaced with acid-free boards.

Climate data loggers have also been hung in different rooms so that if one day enough funds are raised for a holistic project, the recordings of humidity levels would be immediately available.

Compared with the state of the archives last year, when Dr Abela made an appeal for volunteers and funding, the documents now “look loved” and the place is bustling with life. People turn up to carry out research at the archive every day, and some even come from abroad.

A whiteboard has been hung up in one of the main corridors with researchers’ contact details and the topics they are interested in so that if someone comes across any relevant information, the knowledge is shared. It will take more than Dr Abela and Dr Zammit Lupi’s lifetime to preserve the documents within the archives, but in the meantime they are training young people and urging students to take up studies in book and paper conservation.

Although a scheme called Adopt a Notary, where people or companies can sponsor particular notaries’ volumes will be launched in 2015, the archives are already welcoming any sponsorship.

People can donate anything from €100 to €50,000 to help conserve documents like the Grasso Umano and the Jerusalem pass or whole collections of particular notaries.

“These archives house the collective memory of the Maltese nation and should be the pride and joy of the Maltese,” Dr Abela quipped.